Watching The Rise Of Social Media Reality

#LongReads — Watching The Rise Of Social Media Reality

Since their early days, social media have always been a way for users to share a part of their reality, but as social media permeate our lives & habits a bit more every single day, it’s worth wondering if we are not reaching a point where social media is taking over reality: welcome to social media reality.

In this week’s #LongReads section, we are feature three pieces — which are not all that long actually — showing what is at stake when it comes to social media representing reality:

  • In the New York Times, Sarah Maslin Nir decrypts how Instagram has evolved from a post-card-platform where users save trip memories to a travel guide tourists actually use to decide what to visit next.
  • On Vice, Drew Schwartz reports that a US congressman has introduced a bill aiming at classifying presidential tweets as protected records: we all know history is remembered through history books, except in this particular case, the book is a social network.
  • For TechCrunch, Jordan Crook rightfully highlights how the most popular tweets of the year — including the most liked tweet in history — reflect the state of the world, although it could also be argued that, in some ways, social media define what the world is paying attention to, or not.

As edges between social media and reality are blending, it’s getting harder and harder to actually decide whether we want to look at social media through the world or to look at the world through social media, opening the way for a new social media reality.


Loomly is a social media calendar that helps individuals & teams alike create better content for their audiences: start your 15-day free trial now.